(by Patricia Leigh Brown nytimes.com 6-27-01)
By day, Dennis Borba could be mistaken for just another Central Valley rancher in a T-shirt and red pickup truck. But come Monday nights at this torrid time of year, he puts on his glimmering ''suit of lights,'' custom-made in Madrid, and becomes Matador Borba, grabbing a handful of dirt and crossing himself before stepping into the bullring.
In dusty, off-the-map towns like Stevinson, Gustine and Thornton, this is the season of the ''fiesta brava,'' the bullfight. From May to October, but especially June -- roughly coinciding with the arrival of Pentecost Sunday and summerlong celebrations of the Holy Ghost -- thousands of Portuguese-Americans, many from the Azores, flock to wooden bullrings to watch a distinctly different brand of bullfighting.
When Matador Borba takes his cape into the ring, he confronts a living, thousand-pound bull, but not with a sword or a retinue of picadors to jab the bull with lances.
The bull wears a Velcro patch on its mighty shoulders. Mr. Borba's paper-frilled darts, or banderillas, are Velcro-tipped. Rather than piercing the bull, they stick to it. Call it, with apologies to Hemingway, Velcro in the Afternoon.
The California hybrid, in which the bull's diamond-tipped horns are rounded and sheathed in leather to protect stallions mounted by men in Three Musketeers-style outfits, is a spinoff of the traditional Portuguese bloodless bullfight. It also includes a team of eight young men who line up to wrestle the bull to a standstill.
In this variation, the bull is teased, harried, danced with and grappled, but not killed. The Velcro is a California twist.
It is both a nod to animal protectionists and a response to state law. Bullfighting as it is practiced in Spain and Mexico, in which the bull is killed at the finale, is outlawed in the United States. California banned bullfighting of any kind in 1957, but after lobbying by citizens in Gustine, the site of the state's oldest and largest bullring, lawmakers eventually permitted Portuguese-style bullfights held in connection with religious celebrations or festivals.
The 20 or so bullfights held here each summer are not widely known or advertised beyond California's Portuguese-Americans, a closely knit group of some 350,000 dairy farmers and owners, ranchers, and food processing and construction workers. Some make the pilgrimage to Stevinson (population 155), which has one of eight bullrings in the Valley, from as far away as Los Angeles. (Stevinson is a two-hour drive from San Francisco and San Jose.)
They come to partake in a ritual that harks back to village life in Portugal and the Azores, nine islands in the Atlantic about 740 miles off the mainland. Many families in and around Stevinson -- Mr. Borba's among them -- come from the island of Terceira, where summertime celebrations of patron saints and feasts for the Holy Ghost always end with a bullfight.
In California, bullfights typically take place on Monday nights after a series of masses, feasts and religious processions, said Elmano Costa, director of the Center for Portuguese Studies at California State University Stanislaus.
''The bullfight is more than sport,'' Mr. Costa said. ''It's a social event, the place where boy meets girl. It keeps close connections between people who may live far apart, but meet in Stevinson for the bullfight.''
The ring here -- capacity 3,000 -- has the rickety intimacy of an old minor-league ballpark. It resembles a circular town square with maroon siding and is plastered with signs for local businesses like Silveira Hoof Trimming and Joe L. Coelho Inc. Hauling and Corn Chopping, with not a Budweiser logo in sight. It was erected 10 years ago in a pasture across the street from the Stevinson Pentecost Association hall, the nonprofit organization that sponsors most fights and built the ring.
The hall was filled with the aromas of wine and garlic, as dozens of women wearing traditional Azorean aprons cooked pork loins for linguica sandwiches -- ring food.
''Without the bullfight, this town would be pretty much dead,'' said Ruben Almada, a 19-year-old student at Modesto Junior College whose mother, Mary, was cooking. ''It brings the culture alive. You feel like it's dying without it.''
Mr. Borba is the only active professional matador born in the United States. His father, Frank V. Borba, was a pioneer of bullfighting here, going so far in 1980 as to build by hand a Spanish-tiled, 1,200-seat bullring, called Campo Bravo, at the family's ranch in Escalon. His grandfather John bred fighting bulls in the Azores. Most matadors who perform here are flown in from Mexico or Portugal. Mr. Borba is a novelty: a local boy who grew up watching late-night bullfights from Tijuana on UHF.
The matador -- who refuses to divulge his age and supplements his income by doing stuntwork for Hollywood (he says he will be Kiefer Sutherland's stunt double in a forthcoming film about rodeo) -- spent eight years as a novilheiro, or novice, in Mexico, becoming a full-fledged matador in 1987.
In Mexico City, he learned the secret of fighting with the half-cape: ''to make the pass slow, instead of Speedy Gonzalez, so it becomes an art,'' he said. Like many other people here, he can recite the story of how wild bulls were brought down from the mountaintops of Terceira in the 16th century to fend off Spanish invaders.
On a recent Monday night, the trumpets blared mournfully as he stepped into the ring. The first bull, one of two Mr. Borba fought that night, tired quickly, prompting disapproving mutters from the audience, who did not throw their baseball caps into the ring. The second time around, Mr. Borba slowly romanced the bull, gazing at him intently while he pirouetted in the dirt, as if dancing a minuet. The caps flew.
The most alarming job belonged to the Forcados de Turlock, the eight young men who call themselves ''the suicide squad.'' They are the fearless ''grabbers'' who line up and take the bull by the horns as he is charging. The team practices on a dummy bull made out of metal and car tires. Injuries to last year's squad included a concussion and broken ribs.
The bullrings followed the 1960's influx of Azorean immigrants, who came to California, which they referred to as ''the tenth island,'' after a major volcanic eruption. Sometime in the mid-1970's -- there is disagreement over who was first -- local breeders began to import purebred fighting bulls from Mexico.
''You don't know how a bull will fight until you put it in front of a matador,'' said Frank Borba, now 74.
Bulls can be fought only once. ''The second time, they won't go for the cape,'' Dennis Borba said. ''It's, 'uh-oh.' They're very intelligent animals.''
After the fight, they await various fates. The strongest bulls, he said, about one in 100, are bred. The rest are either sold to the rodeo or wind up at slaughterhouses. Mr. Borba, who lays claim to the Velcro concept, is not sentimental about fighting bulls; he considers them lucky.
''At least they have an opportunity in life to show who they are,'' he said.
During the winter, Mr. Borba fights ''real'' bullfights in Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru.
Although largely confined to California, bloodless bullfights have begun to crop up in other states; last summer, three were held in Arkansas City, Kan., to promote ''diversity awareness,'' said Rodney Tipton, a member of the town's multicultural committee. In San Diego, the country's first matador school, the California Academy of Tauromaquia, opened in 1997 despite opposition.
Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, said that ''most states are silent'' on bloodless bullfighting, which the society opposes.
''They create a scenario in which we are one step closer to bloody bullfights,'' he said. ''We're moving away in our culture from harming animals for entertainment purposes. Unfortunately, animal cruelty knows no cultural bounds.''
To Mario Carrión, a retired bullfighter from Madrid and a former Spanish professor at the University of Maryland, Velcro bullfighting is ''a clever addition'' to the taurine canon. ''The artistic value is there, but the extreme danger is not,'' he said. Without picadors weakening the bull's muscles, the bull is more difficult to dominate.
''You can be thrown into the air with tremendous energy,'' Mr. Carrión said. ''The bull seems driven by Duracel batteries.''
Velcro or no Velcro, Matador Borba says a prayer each time he enters the ring.
''I think every bullfighter better have some religion,'' he said. ''It's you, the bull and the Lord.''
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